


We Let Our Battles Choose Us

by 1001cranes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, F/M, Hunger Games, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-05 23:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1836802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six Hunger Games That Never Were</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Let Our Battles Choose Us

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this 5 -- FUCK -- 6 -- HATE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR - 7 Things so I wouldn’t have to write an actual Hunger Games fic and then I wrote nearly 17k anyway because I make spectacular life choices. 
> 
> warnings for all sort of character death, but there is nothing particularly violent or graphic, mostly I am here to destroy your feels. (If you desperately need to know, the more specific whos and hows are listed in the end notes. But, uh, high on Scott and Stiles because its Sciles and I like to torture the ones I love). 
> 
> Part Three is as long as all other parts combined. Some of our children are trickier than others; it’s not that they’re more loved, they just need more attention. Derek was involved. Everything is explained. Ages and Districts changed at whim. I have also broken some minor Hunger Games canon, but nothing that will have you clawing your face off due to excessive inaccuracy. Probably. I don’t know your life. There is also shades of Derek/Scott or even Derek/Scott/Stiles in Part Three, depending on how you slice it. Part Six involves dissociative states and outbursts of anger due to trauma, mentions of mainly past violence. I originally started writing this before 3B but Kira snuck in anyway, congratulations to Kira.

i. 

 _It's dark_ , is Stiles's first thought. _I wasn't expecting dark._ It takes a moment for his eyes to even adjust when his pod first rises out of the ground. Another moment to scope out the other Tributes, to notice Scott is to his left, a third of the way around the circle.

The Games setting is -- destroyed. Almost barren. Apocalyptic, maybe? -- comprised of half-standing buildings and heaps of scrap metal, giant still-smoking structures. Train tracks dip and duck across the edges of the landscape, turning into tunnels and petering out again. A landscape after a war. A reminder of the times before, or perhaps just a warning of what could come to pass; there have been rumors of anti-Capital riots in District 8.

The tunnels, Stiles decides, as the countdown begins. Out of sight might mean at least momentarily out of mind.

| |

"Kind of a good thing," Stiles says faux-cheerfully an hour later, after Scott managed to snatch a bag from the cornucopia, after Stiles grabbed a knife and dragged the two of them in the tunnels. He doesn't think about the kid he had to fight off to get it. "You and me? Not made for open combat my friend."

"I don't think we're really made for combat at all," Scott offers with half a smile, and Stiles smiles clumsily back.

| |

There's water in the tunnels but Stiles wouldn't put money on it being unpolluted. What little food was in the pack is barely enough for two, and it seems likely there will be any to find besides that. After the first massacre at the Cornucopia the cannons sound intermittently, and at midnight Scott and Stiles watch the faces of the dead projected on the night sky through a grate. This Game will be a slowburn, Stiles thinks, bitter. Drawn out. The tunnels are good for hiding, and hunting. For being hunted.

"We can't get backed into a corner," Scott says, weary. They haven’t slept yet. It’s hard to, when every drip of water, every rat scrabbling around the corner sounds like another Tribute trying to sneak up on them. "That's--"

"That means we're _kaput_ , is what it means."

"Map?"

"Yeah. Meeting points too, maybe. If we get split up." _We're stronger together,_ Scott had told him, early on. It wasn't untrue - Victors almost always started out in some kind of Alliance - but Scott had meant something else too. But Isaac had been killed at the Cornucopia and Erica and Boyd had run off in another direction. They couldn't be counted on now.

| |

Early the next morning Scott and Stiles start awake when screams echo down the tunnels. Then three more booming cannons.

"That’s fifteen, isn’t it?” Scott murmurs, counting off on his fingers. “Or is it sixteen? I guess we can count tonight.” Stiles can't help wondering if someone in the Capital is trying to make money off of them right now. Betting on the long-shots. "Do you think we should move?"

"They could just as easily pick us off at the entrance," Stiles mutters. His mother's nickname for him had been 'Sunshine' once upon a time, but it was decidedly tongue in cheek. "I think sleeping's out for a while, though."

“You never finished telling me about the time you broke your collarbone,” Scott says after a minute. “Or how you got that scar on your ass.”

“Hey!” Stiles squeaks, and Scott muffles a snort in his sleeve. “Shit, okay, _quiet_ , just - some things are between a man and the dude who stitched him up, okay?”

| |

Scott dies in Stiles's arms the second night. He’d had trouble breathing before, during training, and after they’d first run away; Stiles had needed to drag him the last few meters into the depths of the tunnel. “Asthma,” Scott had explained, and of course he hadn’t been allowed his inhaler in the Arena. The Gamemaster was probably planning to offer one up later at the Feast, but Scott doesn’t make it that long.

It’s starts out as a little wheeze at the end of each breath. A cough here and there. But when they change camp again Scott starts breathing heavier and heavier, and it isn’t long before he’s full on gasping, before Stiles is hauling him up, sitting Scott up as straight as he can.

“S’okay,” Scott says. Hisses out again, when Stiles starts to lose his cool a little. “Jus’ gotta… wait it out.” But then he goes silent and then he goes blue and before long Stiles is alone in a tunnel of the Seventy-Second Hunger Games, clutching the dead body of what might have been the best friend he’s ever had.

“I don’t think I can do this alone,” Stiles says, blankly. “I don’t –”

| |

When Stiles finally walks away, he tries not to think about the rats.

 

 

ii.

Scott McCall dies on the third day of the Hunger Games, and Stiles loses a hundred dollars.

“Well, shit,” he says, staring up at the screen in dismay. Kate Argent’s booming voice is rolling over the replay of Scott’s death. _Oh, too bad. I did love those brown puppy dog eyes!_ , and next to Stiles, Danny laughs. “Shut up. I was really pulling for him!”

Danny knocks his shoulder against Stiles’s. “Please. You know Tributes from the rural Districts almost never win.”

“Oh, sure. Just because you put _your_ money on District 2’s blonde beefcake.”

“He has a type,” Lydia teases, sing-song. Her bright red hair is piled at least a foot high this afternoon, decorated with little black and lavender feathers that exactly match her dress. She looks beautiful, but Lydia never looks anything less than beautiful in public. “I don’t know what _you_ were thinking though. His training score was only a five, for heaven’s sake.”

“Even Beefcake scored an eight,” Danny reminds him, smug.

Stiles can’t help letting a little pout form on his face. “You saw his interview! He was cute! He was _funny_ ,” and now both Danny and Lydia are laughing at him. “And nice!” He’d taken the littlest tribute under his wing, the one from 7, and had made her smile by pulling funny faces. Not that smiles had helped when the wolves tore her to pieces. “You’re monsters. I need some consolation! Hopes dashed, dreams ending, blah blah blah. I’m on the verge of a crushing depression, here.”

“Plus you owe me a hundred dollars,” Danny reminds him.

“Rub salt in the wound, why don’t you.”

“Well, _I_ want another cocktail,” Lydia says, imperiously. “Something pink.”

“One for me too,” Danny says. “Not pink.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “My treat, I’m guessing?” He throws his hand in the air to wave down the server. “Fine. What do you think about letting me go double or nothing on the girl Tribute from District 4. Erin?”

“Erica,” Lydia corrects. Her eyes gleam. “I could be persuaded.”

 

 

iii.

Stiles never thought he had a particularly good chance of winning the Hunger Games - statistically speaking, no one does - but when he finds out one of this year’s Careers from District 1 is a Hale, he briefly considers committing ritualistic suicide by stepping off the platform too early and just getting it over with.

“Stiles!” Scott’s face falls into a slightly misshapen O of disapproval. “You can’t just - you can’t just _give up_.”

"Why not?” Stiles asks. He’s bitter, but he’s got yet another reason for it - a Hale is practically a death sentence, and this year’s model is especially muscled and angry looking. “No one but a Hale wins in a Hale year.”

"They lost once!"

"Sure, to an _Argent_. Gods against Gods, Scott. They don’t lose to peons like us.”

Scott can’t really argue with that.

“Just eat your meatloaf,” he says finally, and Stiles does. He can eat as much as he wants on the Capital’s dime while he’s here. No point going _hungry_. Hah fucking hah.

| |

Their first week of training isn’t entirely disastrous. Scott knows plants and basic first aid, and Stiles has been sneaking in to watch Peacekeeper training since he was ten. Scott has used an axe before too, although Stiles doubts chopping wood is anything like chopping into a person. But all in all, it could be worse. They’re both healthy and athletic. And they’ve got each other.

“We’re not doomed,” Stiles admits when they stop to get a drink of water. “I mean, we’re _doomed_ , but we’re slightly less doomed than I thought.” The obvious threats are the six Careers, same as every year; the disarmingly intelligent girl from 5, the one who looks like she isn’t even paying attention before ripping through the training programs; and the two Tributes from 7 - one of them is absolutely gigantic and the other is tiny and terrifying, with a habit of appearing _just_ at the corner of your vision. The kind that sneaks around and murders everyone in their sleep, is what Stiles is getting at, and he refuses to go out like that, thank you very much.

But the rest of the Tributes? Younger, weaker, not particularly smart; often clumsy the way adolescents unfortunately are. Mona, the girl Tribute who came with Stiles is only twelve, short and stocky; her family had been shepherds, for God’s sake. And the girl from 8 who’d come with Scott - Jenna? Gemma? - had hurt her leg the first day of training. She was limping around in a _brace_. They were as good as dead already.

 _That’s good_ , Stiles tries to remind himself. _Other people dead, you alive. You live, buddy._

The thoughts are hollow, though. Awful. Stiles has always been the kind of person who stayed pretty upbeat - ready with a smile, a joke, a funny story for when his mom was feeling well enough to hear them - but this is the kind of darkness you don’t just joke away.

“Probably we’re still going to be slaughtered,” he tacks on. “Just to be clear,” and Scott punches him in the shoulder.

| |

The male Tribute from District 7 - Adam? - tries to get up in Hale’s face during practice, despite it being completely against the rules. Probably a power move, Stiles thinks, a bid to get in on an Alliance with the Careers. Stiles would have done it himself if he thought there was anything he could bring to the table, and that the Careers wouldn’t stab him in the back the first chance they saw. It backfires anyway, because Hale slams a bo stick over maybe-Adam’s head so hard it actually snaps in two. Which is _also_ against the rules, but pretty damn impressive nonetheless. The other Careers look positively smug, and the brunette from District 1 practically drapes herself over him when the trainers haul Adam-the-dumbass off to the infirmary.

Scott pokes Stiles with the tip of his blunted sword, gently, and raises an eyebrow. “Pretty big, but not too bright,” he says.

Stiles snorts. “I bet the head injury didn’t help.”

“Do you think it matters?” One of the Careers has apparently overheard them and inserted himself into the conversation. He’s tall, with brown hair and weird red eyes - fancy fucking rich Districts with their fancy fucking Careers and their fancy fucking hair colors and contacts and weird body modifications - and a smirk that Stiles would love to wipe all over the floor. But even he knows discretion is currently the better part of valor here. “Do you think you stand a chance? Any of you little rejects?

"Do we ever?" Scott asks. It’s almost belligerent. “And what does it matter to you anyway, if you’re not worried?”

Oh Jesus. If Red Eyes decides to snap Scott like a twig, there isn’t much the trainers are going to be able to do about it after the fact. You don’t get a pass because you’ve got a broken limb - it’s been tried.

Luckily, the female Tribute from 4 steps forward to put a hand on Red Eyes’s arm. “Deucalion,” she says quietly. She’s got a nice voice. Very soothing. “I think our time could be better spent elsewhere.”

“I suppose it would.” He stares at Scott for a moment longer, and sneers, “See you in the Arena,” before heading over to one of the advanced training stations. Soothing Voice follows him, and gradually the other Careers as well, with Hale bringing up the rear after a particularly long and piercing stare.

“Do the trainers even _do_ anything around here?” Stiles mutters, and yanks Scott over to the first aid station.

| |

At lunch Hale sits down with Scott and Stiles.

There's a ripple throughout the lunch room. It’s a power shift - it’s a _huge_ power shift for a Career to even nominally align himself with nobodies from 8 and 10. Stiles shivers, like someone had slapped a target on his back then and there. The female Tribute who fights with his feet looks unimpressed but Deucalion looks displeased, and the pale brunette looks positively murderous. Great. Fantastic.

Scott flicks his eyes towards Stiles’s, because _what in the --_

Stiles raises both eyebrows back. _No idea, buddy._

“So. Hale...”

“Derek,” he interrupts. “My name is Derek.”

“Derek,” Stiles says, slowly. “Can I ask why on God’s green earth you’re sitting with us?”

“That woman,” Derek says to Scott, like Stiles hadn’t asked him a goddamn question. “The one the Peacekeepers held back. That was your mother?”

Scott’s half-smile fades by degrees. “Yeah. It’s just - it’s just me and her, so. She didn’t take it so well.” She’d had a bruise on the side of her face when they’d brought her to the Justice Building to say goodbye, Scott had told him. She’d carried herself so carefully.

“I don’t have any family,” Derek says after a long moment. “But I did, once, and you… do. I don’t --” Scott is looking at him, open and curious, but he doesn’t _get_ it; Stiles can see in his face that he doesn’t, and Stiles does.

Stiles keeps from going crazy by constantly playing the numbers, by realizing that a flat 1-in-24 chance wasn’t good to begin with, that juggling the odds of training scores and alliances and the terrain of the games - he knows, odds are, he’s not coming out of this. And in some weird way, that makes it easier to accept his ever more likely fate. But Derek doesn’t care about odds. Stiles is prepared to die, but Derek is welcoming it. He never planned on getting out alive at all.

It’s not that there haven’t been suicides in the Games before, but they were almost always about choosing between the lesser of two evils - cutting open your own throat versus getting torn apart by a pack of muttations, downing a handful of poison berries instead of dying from sepsis. And it’s not that Stiles has never known someone who committed suicide - District 10 has long winters, dark nights, and few people; its a fact of life that not everyone makes it to spring. It’s that - it’s that someone with so much better odds, with an _actual chance_ , the kind of person who spent their whole life training for this moment… doesn’t even want it.

And that? Is pretty fucking sad.

“Dude,” Stiles says. “Dude, if you want to be partners, you should just ask. And then I think you should just give me your pudding.”

Something that might be a smile flickers over Derek’s face, but it’s gone too soon to tell. “You know you can have as much as you want, right.”

“Yes, but that pudding is _yours_.”

“It’s tastier that way,” Scott chimes in. “Duh.”

“Literally everyone knows this.”

Derek hands it over. “I want to be partners. Now can I have your kale?”

“Of _course_ you would want my kale.”

“Take mine too!”

| |

“I don’t blame you for leaving them,” Scott says later, when Derek is correcting Scott’s throwing stance. “Careers are _weird_.” Then - “Uh. No offense.”

“None taken,” Derek says blandly. “Now stop bending your knees so much.”

| |

When Derek has a spear or a knife he hits ten out of ten, every time, left hand or right. He’s the second biggest Tribute after the giant numbskull from District 7, and he’s nearly as strong. It’s a coup to have gotten him on their side and Stiles tries to ignore everything else raging inside of him, screaming about why Derek chose _them_.

“You’d slit my throat to save him, wouldn’t you?” he asks instead. There are a dozen other questions on the tip of his tongue, but this is the most important one. The answer to this one will hurt the least.

Derek doesn’t say anything, and Stiles smiles. It’s not a pretty smile, but then again, they’re not talking about particularly pretty things.

“It’s okay,” he continues, and twirls one of the daggers around his fingers. Slow and controlled. Stiles has always been good with his hands. “I’d do the same to you.”

After a moment Derek nods. “As long as we’re in agreement.”

“He’s better than us.” That isn’t even something that has to be agreed on. Scott _is_.

Derek nods. “Come on. We’ll practice hand-to-hand.”

| |

Stiles goes to bed that night thoroughly bruised, but inside - inside he feels lighter than he should.

| |

“Is there anyone else we can trust?” Stiles asks the next day. It’s only three days to the Games. If there are moves left to be made, they should make them now.

After a long moment Derek shakes his head. Which is about what Stiles expected, to be frank. “The Careers think you’re dead weight. They think I’m crazy.” _I’m not certain I’m not_ , Derek seems to be thinking. “I’m don’t think anyone else is worth the time.”

“Lydia?” Stiles asks. And then prompts, “The redhead from 5?” when all he gets is a blank stare.

“She’s smart,” Derek says grudgingly. Everyone had seen her at the computers, running through the programs like she’d designed them herself. “She has to know her best chance is waiting it out. You can’t do that in a group.”

“Guys!” Across the room, Scott is hanging upside down from the jungle gym. Big grin on his face, and his messy hair flopping upside-down and everywhere. “Are you arguing again?”

Stiles uncrosses his arms as he walks over. “Look, if Derek thinks this year’s Arena is going to be another desert, he is clearly _wrong_ , and I cannot help that.”

| |

Stiles still doesn’t know what whim of fate made him sidle up to Scott on that first day and make a joke about the trainer with the pink hair - “was she going for cotton candy, do you think, or was there an unfortunate incident with a hair dryer?” - but Scott’s lopsided, unrestrained smile always makes him glad he did.

| |

The whole thing almost blows up on the night before the Games. Scott gets it into his head they need to take Gemma with them - tiny useless Gemma from District 8, with the leg brace! - the little sister of some guy he used to be best friends with when they were kids, or some shit, and Stiles _loses_ it.

“Who the fuck cares,” Stiles blows up, finally, and fuck Scott’s stupid stubborn puppy dog face, _fuck it._ He’s an asshole for yelling, but he doesn’t know how to make Scott understand the gravity of the situation. How does he not understand? “Do you not fucking _get it_ , Scott? Do you not understand that only one person walks about of this? That it’s _not_ going to be her? That if we don’t keep our shit together it’s not going to be one of _us_?”

“We can’t --” Scott yells back, and stutters. “We _could_ \--”

“You’ve got a big, beautiful fucking heart, but I’m not gonna see it bleed all over the ground if I can help it,” Stiles says honestly, as honest as the day he was born and just as raw. “Don’t make me watch you die, Scott, I can’t -”

“Okay,” Scott says. His face is warm against Stiles’s skin, and his arms are tight around Stiles’s shoulders. “Okay, I won’t. We won’t. I promise.”

| |

As the male Tribute from District 1, Derek is the first one on stage that night. Under the show lights he goes from taciturn and monosyllabic to charming and almost effusive. It’s a little disturbing, if Stiles is being honest, but he supposes Careers know this is as much a part of the Games as anything.

“Your training score was impressive,” Kate Argent says. She’s dressed in silver, her signature color, from head to toe. Dazzling. “Ten out of twelve - one of the highest in the Games!”

“Thank you,” Derek says, and keeps smiling. “I hope to show the Capital how much I deserve it.”

“Well, just _look_ at you,” Kate practically coos. Her smile is predatory, and just as fake as Derek’s. “I think anyone could see how much of a threat you are.”

“You know what they say - only a Hale wins in a Hale year,” and the crowd roars its approval.

“Very true, very true,” Kate says, and sits up on the edge of her chair. “ _Speaking_ of Hales.” She recrosses her legs before going in for the kill. “As some of our viewers know, your whole family was killed earlier this year in a house fire, including three past Victors - Talia, Peter, and Laura. All - all very tragic,” she says, over scattered applause, as three faces are superimposed on the wall behind her. “There was a beautiful ceremony here in the Capital. And I’m sure, as the last Hale, you’re going to continue their legacy?”

Derek’s smile cracks, for a moment, before he recovers.

“Well,” he says, “I guess as long as the Arena isn’t set near a volcano,” and the audience laughs.

| |

There are thirteen more Tributes before Scott even hits the stage, which is more than enough for the audience to start getting restless. Stiles doesn’t blame them - maybe-Adam-actually-Aiden from District 7 was barely coherent, and the tiny girl Tribute managed to even creep Kate out a little. _That’s_ talent. Budding serial killer talent. And as entertaining as the whole charade is, everyone knows the winner will more than likely be one of the Careers. The rest of the Tributes are amusing, but there’s no sense getting too attached.

Luckily, it’s only a moment before Scott’s charm overcomes his nerves, and by the end Kate is cooing over his eyes and curly hair.

“Did you know,” she says, “That if you win this year’s Hunger Games, you’d be one of the youngest Victors ever? Only two other Victors have ever won the Games at fourteen!”

“Oh,” Scott says, like the oblivious little shit he is, and tugs on the hair at the back of his neck sheepishly. “Really?”

“Really, sweetheart,” she says, and winks. “I know I’ll be rooting for you!”

| |

When it’s his turn Stiles does okay. Kate Argent is quick and occasionally cruel but he can keep up with her, and he dials back his usual level of sarcasm from ‘biting’ to ‘generally funny.’ He gets a few laughs, which is about as much as a skinny kid from District 10 can hope for.

Stiles’s mentor tries to give him some last minute advice as they watch Mona struggle to keep up with Kate’s witty repartee, but since the guy is roughly the size of a barn door and mostly spent his time in the Arena mowing down anyone who came near him, they’ve never really been on the same wavelength.

“I wrote a letter for my dad,” Stiles says once awkward silence has descended. “If you could make sure that gets to him.” They both know he isn’t coming back.

| |

The thirty seconds in the pod are the longest of Stiles’s life. He isn’t particularly claustrophobic - anxious, sure; what _isn’t there_ to be anxious about? - but everything becomes so narrow in that moment he thinks he might have forgotten to breathe.

When the pod clears the ground he can see that the Arena this year is beautiful. Bright. There’s a cluster of mountains close to the Cornucopia, red and harsh, like they’ve been baked in the sun for years and years without seeing a single drop of rain. The dusty ground butts right up against a wide river that runs off into the distance, an artificial boundary if ever there was one. On the side opposite there are patches of forest, thick and dark, and wide open fields dotted with flowers. The mouth of the river spills out from a waterfall on the south end, the rock around it as smooth as glass, so smooth there’s no chance of climbing it. 

| |

Alan Deaton’s voice booms out over the Arena, calm and sonorous. “Ladies and gentlemen, let the 57th Hunger Games begin - and may the odds be ever in your favor.” 

| | 

Somehow, against all actual odds, the first fives minutes of the Games are not an unmitigated disaster.

When the bell rings Derek heads to the center of the Cornucopia, where both the best supplies and the greatest danger lurk. He takes a slash to the upper back from one of the Careers - girl is _fast_ , shit, much faster than she’d ever shown in the Training Center - and he stabs another Career through the stomach. _Schick_. Shove and twist, and then he’s running away from the Cornucopia, a spear in each hand.

Scott and Stiles take the easier route - they stick together, scout out the edges, and manage to snag two bags of lesser supplies from safer spots without having to do anymore than take a swing at someone. Not everyone is so lucky -- the male Tribute from 9 gets his head cracked like an egg. Mona gets shot in the side while Lydia grabs a small bag from the fringes and runs. A few people are still scrambling for supplies around the other Tributes trying to mow them down, the Careers a thick cluster at the center, but the crowd is _thinning_.

"We gotta go," Stiles says, grabbing blindly for Scott’s arm. The Careers will have the control of the Cornucopia soon enough, and the easy targets will either be dead or running. "We gotta _go_. Derek!"

They run for the forest instead of the mountains, and the cannon booms and booms and booms.

| |

It’s at least a mile to the edges of the forest, easy. Not at all the kind of distance you want to sprint, but what other choice is there? There’s no cover out here, none, and Stiles can feel the space between his shoulderblades itching. Begging for an arrow. For someone to chase them down.

“Stop!” Scott shouts once they’ve crossed the river, their feet and pants wet and heavy; he yanks hard enough on Stiles’s arm for Stiles to feel the pull of it in his shoulder. “Derek, stop!”

Derek is fast enough to have caught up to them from the Cornucopia, even dragging the spears and supplies, and when Scott and Stiles skitter to a halt he turns around and presses his back to theirs. Guarding them, like a human shield. “What?” he hisses. “We need to be in the forest _now_.”

“We have to go around the field!” Scott insists, and Stiles doesn’t wait for anything more than that before he’s tugging Scott off to the side of it. “These flowers - they’re called blue rocket, they’re _poison_.”

“So let’s go around already!” It’s longer path to the trees, winding around instead of a straight shot, but they can’t stand still like a couple of lemmings. “Come on, left, go!”

| |

“It’s poison even to touch,” Scott explains, when they’ve hit the treeline and switched from running pell mell to a brisk hike, eyes open for other Tributes and whatever dangers the forest might hold. “If we’d tried to go through the field we’d probably be dead by tomorrow.”

“Takes care of some of the competition,” Stiles mutters. Derek doesn’t say anything, but Stiles can almost feel his silent agreement.

| |

When they’re far enough in the forest to be safe - “For now,” Derek begrudges, and insists on being the one to stand guard - they hide behind a small rocky outcropping and sort through their packs.

“Our bounty,” Stiles says. “Our _booty_!” and Scott muffles a giggle in his arm while Derek briefly pinches the bridge his nose. Not the time, maybe; but the more inappropriate a time for humor, the more Stiles wants to crack a joke.

Between the three of them they have two spears, one hooked and particularly lethal, already practically glued to Derek’s hand; six throwing knives; one skinning knife; one sleeping bag; two blankets; one spool of thick wire; and an empty canteen. Derek passes Scott the other spear and Stiles takes the skinning knife without comment. They divvy up the throwing knives and sleeping gear equally, tucked away into their packs.

“No water,” Scott says grimly, and shakes the canteen as though it will magically make some appear. “And no food.” They all know that after the initial massacre at the Cornucopia, succumbing to the elements or dying of thirst or starvation are the most common ways to be killed in the Games. This doesn’t bode particularly well. “We’ll have to head back to the river.”

“Dangerous,” Derek says, and touches one of the knives already tucked into his belt.

“Necessary,” Scott argues. “We _need_ it. We just ran, like, a _mile_ , and it’s not exactly going to be a vacation from here on out.”

Stiles only half-listens to them arguing, and picks at the wire. “We should split up,” he says after a minute. Derek and Scott both look at him like he’s crazy, but Stiles shrugs his shoulders. “Not right now, but - Scott, you said the blue rocket was poison, right? We saw at least two other Tributes go through that the field. They might die, but they’re _definitely_ sick. I don’t think that’s an opportunity we can waste.” 

Derek nods slowly. Scott looks more torn, but he doesn’t bother to protest.

“How long for the blue rocket to make them sick?” Derek asks.

“A few hours,” Scott says. “Dusk.”

“So we get water,” Derek says. “We make a camp--”

“I can set traps,” Stiles interrupts. “For food, or… uh, for people, I guess. The wire should be sturdy enough.” He won’t be able to kill anyone outright, but it might be able to incapacitate or hurt them; maybe even set something up to warn them when others are coming.

“Okay,” Derek says, switches from holding the spear in his right hand to his left. “Okay. Camp, then traps. Then you and Scott stay hidden, and I go - hunting.”

| |

“A lot of these plants are edible,” Scott says later. They’re nosing around the camp, spear and knife in hand, hidden in a little grotto made of trees. “Not the blue rocket though. Or the bittersweet.”

“The --?”

“The yellow berries.”

“Yeah, small words,” Stiles says. “Please and thank.”

“Yellow berries _bad_ ,” Scott exaggerates, and points to a cluster, purposefully slow.

Stiles pushes his shoulder against Scott’s. “You’re a real comedian.” 

| |

It’s a little fucked up and it’s definitely terrible timing, but Scott is probably the best friend Stiles has ever had. Stiles has never been particularly popular back home. His dad had worked with the Peacekeepers, which kept Stiles fed and his mother taken care of, but wasn’t necessarily the most popular choice with everyone else in the District; and Stiles himself had always been too weird, too smart, too loud, too whatever. So it was nice to have this with Scott, the back and forth. It makes Stiles forget where he is for a second or two, like maybe he’s just on some camping trip, and his home is just a mile or two down a beaten path. And maybe all this hilarious banter will land them a sponsor; maybe someone will be amused by the funny, oddball little group composed of the Hale Tribute, the loudmouth from 10, and the sweetheart from 8. Beauty and balls won Talia Hale a set of silver knuckles in her year, and she beat the everloving shit out of six different Tributes, declared Victor still dripping red with blood. Maybe someone out there is falling in love with Scott’s soft brown eyes and pretty smile. Stiles could certainly sympathize.

| |

The cannon booms once more just after Derek leaves, and then twice again before Derek gets back. At midnight the images of the dead are superimposed on the night sky. There are no surprises. Four of the Careers are still alive, minus the boy from District 4 Derek killed at the Cornucopia. Mona and Gemma are dead, and eleven more Tributes besides.

“Halfway there,” Derek says evenly. “More than.”

Stiles is tempted to ask which two Derek killed, but that seems… petty. And Stiles _is_ petty, to be perfectly frank, but it doesn’t seem like a great time to antagonize Scott’s strongest ally just for kicks.

“I can keep watch now,” he says instead. The forest is so dense it won’t be hard to hear anyone coming.

Derek levels him with a long look before pulling out his own sleeping bag and lying down next to Scott.

| |

The next morning Scott bandages the wound on Derek’s back with yarrow and strips of fabric pulled from one of Derek’s sleeves. They head to the stream, drink their fill, and refill the canteen. They check the traps Stiles set and find a thickly furred rodent roughly the size of a chicken in one of them - it looks something like a rabbit, but with shorter ears and a mouth terrifyingly full of teeth.

“I… don’t need to sleep. Ever again,” Scott declares, and Stiles makes a scared noise of agreement.

They spend the rest of the day setting more traps and picking the berries Scott deems safe. They’re not particularly filling, but it seems wiser to tuck some away in their packs for the days ahead, just in case, rather the gorge themselves now. The Cornucopia was the sprint; the rest of the Games is the long haul.

In the early afternoon Stiles skins the not-rabbit, Scott shoves a handful of berries in the chest cavity, and Derek makes a fire and spit to roast it. The overall effect is… not horrible. Greasy and maybe a touch too raw in places, but not horrible. There have been winters Stiles ate worse than this, on hominy made from ashes and feed grain.

| |

They don’t hear a single cannon the entire day. Stiles swears the night is colder, breath hanging in the air, sharp. They take turns standing watch wrapped in blankets.

| |

By the third day the silence is more disconcerting.

“The Gamemaker is being cautious,” Derek says. It’s making him nervous - _obviously_ nervous, even; he keeps clenching and unclenching his fists.

Stiles snorts. “Well, _yeah_. Last year it was over too quickly.” Victoria Argent had been a renowned Gamemaster for over a decade, but she’d gone a little too hard last year. More than fifteen tributes had died on the first day from the poison gases alone, forget the giant _rats_. “Not much of a show,” he says, and makes little jazz hands for emphasis. “Though I’m not sure how dying from boredom is giving the Capital much of a show either.”

“I’d take it over the alternatives,” Scott mutters.

| |

That night the girl from District 7 comes for them.

Derek is the one on watch, the one who shouts for them to protect themselves, but she goes for Stiles first, and it’s Stiles who scrambles for his knife, who nearly guts her before Derek can stab her through the chest.

It’s not - the skinning knife isn’t particularly long, and it catches. Stiles never realize how slick blood was in such large quantities. How warm, in the cold air, how fucking _warm_.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Scott says, gently, and Stiles realizes he’s not sure exactly how long he’s been standing and shaking. It’s almost more disconcerting that the actual killing. He can’t afford to crack up now.

“Okay,” he says. “That’s - yeah, can we - “

Derek is wiping the blood off of his spear and onto the grass. “Go ahead and use what’s left in the canteen.” He sounds almost gentle, and oh my _god_ , that would be the one thing to send Stiles into a tailspin. “I’ll grab the supplies and we can head to the river.”

| |

“I realize it’s not the time or place for gloating,” Stiles says a half an hour later, knees cracking the ice that has formed at the edges of the river, “but you _have_ to admit I called that one.”

“You’re very smart,” Scott says, faux-admiring, and flicks cold water at Stiles’s face. “Go you.”

“There’s still blood in your hair,” Derek says, not to be outdone.

| |

None of them even pretend to sleep for the rest of the night. Which is fine with Stiles, because then he gets to hear a bunch of stories Scott has heard from his mother about all the stupid ways people injure themselves, and even one begrudging story from Derek about the time his little sister Cora shaved his eyebrows off while he was sleeping and then berated him for letting his guard down.

“My parents took her side,” he continues, sour, and Stiles laughs so hard he has to stifle in his blanket.

He forgets, sometimes and somehow, that they’ll likely all be dead within the next few days.

| |

They stay at the edge of the river until daybreak. It’s not as well protected as the woods, but it seems likely that the remaining Careers are still holed up in the Cornucopia with the supplies. Aiden had headed off into the mountains after the buzzer. Lydia could be anywhere, really, but she would be stupid to try and take all three of them on directly.

When it’s light again they head back to the forest, to relative safety, where there are traps to check and berries to gather. There weren’t any not-rabbits to eat yesterday, and the low-grade hunger they’re all been handling is slowly becoming more and more demanding. The girl from 7 had a tin of food on her, but it was opened, and just as likely to have been poisoned as not.

“I would shank you both for some beef stew,” Stiles says wistfully, when all the traps are empty again. He thinks even Derek snorts at that.

| |

Later that afternoon the river floods.

Stiles hears the noise before he sees anything. It’s starts small, soft and low; but it builds into a crashing, whispery rush that gets louder and louder and louder, until he see the water push out over the cliff like a _wall_. The waterfall itself doubles in width all at once, spilling out past its usual boundaries, the sharp rocks that had hemmed it in. They’re far enough away that the whole thing seems to happen in slow motion, and thank fuck for that. The Gamemaster is making herself clear - if they’re not going to kill each other, she’ll do it for them.

“Fuck,” Stiles says, even as he’s scrambling to stand, to shove his arms through the loops of his pack. They’ve had floods in District 10 before, years where the spring rains swelled out of the banks and spread out over the fields. This much water isn’t going to just sink into the ground. Not in the Arena. “Time to go, go-time is _now_.”

“Mountains,” Derek says. “We need to head to the mountains.” He’s yanking Scott to his feet, pushing him towards the north end.

“But,” Scott says. “The woods -”

“We’ll drown,” Stiles says. More running, running _again_ , for fuck’s sake. “We need high ground.” The flood is obviously, _obviously_ a trap - a move to get all of the Tributes in the same area because the Games have been too long without a death - but it’s not one they can avoid. The woods are almost all lowland; they’ll drown or they’ll be trapped without food. It’s not much of a choice.

“Stop talking and fucking _run_ ,” Derek says, and grabs Stiles by the scruff of the neck. _Ow_. “The outcropping on the end. Don’t stop.”

Stiles doesn’t stop, but he does stumble. Twice. He can’t help it; he’s got big feet and gangly limbs and he doesn’t always do well under pressure. He doesn’t hurt himself when he trips - nothing he feels in that moment, anyway - but those precious seconds make all the difference between getting to the gravelly incline that leads up to the mountain and -- you know. Not.

He hears the cannon after he trips the first time. The big boom that shows the flood is doing exactly what it was supposed to. Sixteen dead, now. Two-thirds of the Tributes gone. Goodbye.

When Stiles gets caught up in the water, watching Derek and Scott’s backs, watching Derek pull Scott left towards the mountains, he thinks, _shit, it’s going to be at least seventeen dead soon enough._

| |

Stiles isn’t a strong swimmer. There was never a need for it. District 10 was flatlands and fields, the occasional hill, ponds and a lazy river or two. He went to the local swimming hole during the worst of summer, but it wasn’t to do anything more than jump in and float on his back, to get back out and have the heat leech the water from him until he felt hot and dusty enough to do it all over again. He isn’t prepared for the wave at his back, the slap of it, the harsh gasp of air and brackish water he sucks in; the way it picks him up off his feet and pushes him forward, instantaneously cold and wet and terrifying.

Drowning would not be Stiles preferred way to go, okay - choking and heaving, aware of every excruciating moment his brain was fighting for air? No thanks. If Stiles had known it was going to come to this, he would have let the midnight assassination attempt go through.

Try and keep your head above water, he thinks, just keep _moving_. He paddles blindly, tries to stay going straight when he gets dragged through an eddy, and he hits something solid eventually. A rock? He clings to it. He should try to keep going, probably, but he can’t. He just can’t. This is the wall. Stiles has hit it, literally and figuratively, and his limbs just - refuse to move, sodden and tired.

Stiles closes his eyes.

| |

When Stiles wakes up, it’s actually a bit of a surprise.

He blinks a few times, experimentally, as though the sky above him is going to disappear. The absence of noise is as disconcerting as the initial roar of the flood had been. Stiles has to shake his head a few times, like it needs clearing, before he realizes that what he’s hearing is just _silence_. The stone is uncomfortably cold beneath his back, but he’s not dead so… that’s something.

“Scott?” he yells, even though his throat hurts. “Derek?” It’s a little stupid to yell, probably, when anyone else could be around and ready to stab him, but he still feels a bit like the human equivalent of runny oatmeal, so if someone wants to kill him they should just _do_ it already, Stiles isn’t going to be able to stop them. “Derek?”

“Stiles!” Scott says, his beaming face popping up over the edge of one of the rocks. “You’re awake!”

“I’m alive!”

“You sound surprised,” Scott says, after he flings his arms around Stiles and crushes him halfway back to death. “I’m glad you’re okay. We looked back, and you were - you were --”

“Coincidentally,” Stiles says, around the lump in his throat, “I’m also really glad to not be dead,” and he startles when Derek snorts.

“Derek pulled you out,” Scott says. “You were kind of, uh, pale."

“You’re welcome, by the way," Derek says. 

“ _Thank you_ ,” Stiles mocks, and then follows it up with a punch to Derek’s ridiculously muscled shoulder. Because Stiles is a failure of a human being. “Really.”

“We were arguing about whether we heard a second cannon,” Scott says, right before Stiles says something else either stupidly sincere or dangerously sarcastic. “Derek says yes, I say no.”

“I couldn’t - I’m not sure. I got lost in the overwhelming panic,” Stiles admits. “I also, uh. Lost my pack. So there’s that.” The skinning knife is, miracle of miracles, still stuck in his belt. But the wire, blanket, and two throwing knives he was carrying are gone, along with the extra handful of berries he’d had tucked in his blanket. He’d certainly wished he’d eaten them _now_.

“I lost my spear,” Scott says, a little relieved, like he was glad Stiles admitted to screwing up first. Considering the strength of one of Derek’s less judgmental glares, that seems understandable. “I still have my pack though!”

Derek shakes his head at both of them. “Worry about that later. We need to get moving.”

Stiles can’t say he doesn’t get the urgency. The remaining Tributes, whether down by one or two, are closer than ever. And considering there’s less space, less cover, and probably next to no food, the Games are about to get violent very quickly - kudos to the Gamemaster there.

And fuck, but it’s going to be colder tonight, Stiles realizes, so much colder once the sun goes down. In the mountains, in these clothes, hardly anything to make a fire, and without a fucking _blanket_.

“Fuck,” Stiles whispers, and presses the palms of his hands to his forehead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His whole body feels bruised and he’s still slightly damp, but he tries a shaky smile when Scott shoots him a worried look.

 _I’m sick of this_ , Stiles think suddenly. It feels almost vicious, but only almost. He doesn’t have the energy for vicious. Not right now. The drive to stay alive seems like it would be easy, _should_ be easy -- the easiest part of the Games, simpler than killing people might be, or surviving someplace that is actively trying to kill you, but it _isn’t_. It’s hard to drum up. It’s hard to pretend this isn’t affecting him. It’s hard to _stand_. 

He’s glad Scott helps pull him to his feet. He doesn’t know if he would have been able to do it himself.

| |

At midnight the day’s dead once more light up the night sky.

“Jennifer,” Derek says, surprised, when a picture of one of the female Careers flashes before the girl from 7. “She--” His snaps his mouth shut with an audible click.

Stiles raises an eyebrow, but Scott puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder. Belatedly, Stiles realizes Jennifer was from District 1 too; that Derek would have known her. Hell, Derek probably knew her his whole _life_ , tucked away in one of the stupid fancy academies the rich Districts set up for Careers, training and eating and sleeping together, each year the weak half culled away until only the few and best remained.

“Sorry,” Stiles says after a minute. “If she was your friend, I mean.”

Derek straightens his shoulders. If the motion knocks Scott’s hand away, Derek doesn’t seem to care. “Careers don’t have friends.”

“Bullshit,” Stiles says. It slips out before he can think it over, but it’s the most bullshit thing he’s ever heard, and it’s the saddest too. “Bullshit, because - “

“Because you have us,” Scott says.

Derek gives them a look somewhere between his usual stony glare and the flash of emotion Stiles had seen dart over his face when Kate Argent mentioned his family, but he doesn’t say anything else.

Knocking the fight out of him is kind of like winning, Stiles supposes.

| |

In the morning Scott vomits. It’s a dark, phlegmy yellow and smells sharply of bile, probably because there can’t be much of anything else for Scott to throw up. His forehead is warm under Stiles’s hand, almost hot in the cold morning air, and he looks pale and sleepy even as he protests that he’s fine.

Stiles shares a look with Derek over the top of Scott’s head. They’ve been light on food for days - not hungry, but not really _full_ \- and there’s been nothing to eat since early yesterday. They don’t have water either; the flood water was brackish and cloudy when they left it behind, full of God only knows what, and certain to do more harm than good.

Stiles allows himself one futile moment to wish for a miraculous silver parachute, for a container of medicine or a bottle of water. But his District is too poor to even think about wasting money on his loser ass to begin with, much less one of his allies. Derek was the Career stupid enough to break away from the status quo, who didn’t make a better move or even a lateral one but a disadvantageous one. Scott is cute, and likeable, so maybe -- maybe someone will take pity on that. On their ragtag little group. But the much more depressing reality is that they’re on their own. Stiles and Derek would die for Scott - would cut their own throats if that was the last obstacle standing in Scott’s way - but they aren’t there yet. That doesn’t do any good now.

“I think we should rest for a while,” Stiles says instead. “Not like we have anywhere else to be, right?”

| |

Stiles spends the morning trying not to think about how hungry he is. It works about as well as his usual attempts at trying not to think about something he doesn’t want to -- which is not well at all. He thinks about winter stews, hearty, thick and buttery in the good years. He thinks about bread, fresh bread, still steaming when you bust it open. He’d kill - literally, _he would kill_ \- for the day old stuff, even a clump of hominy loaf, small and wetly crumbed and prone to rot. He thinks about finding even one tiny blade of a grass, munching on the soft white roots the way kids sometimes do in the summer, sitting in the fields. Sucking the nectar out of clover, munching on the bitter four-leaves. 

But there isn’t even a chance of that, Stiles reminds himself; not here, not in these mountains, scraped bone clean and baked under the sun. They’re deader than any mountain has a right to be, as synthetic as rabbits with rat teeth and whole fields of poison flowers. They haven’t seen a single thing growing, not once in the whole trek from where the flood spit them out to the rocky enclave Derek chose as their hideout. The Gamemaster is starving them out.

The sound of Deaton’s voice breaking through Stiles’s thoughts is almost a welcome respite.

“This year’s Feast will be something of a novelty,” Deaton announces. “An actual Feast! Those Tributes who head towards the top of the mountain will find fresh water, food, and a few surprises. You could refuse to come, but I think the benefits outweigh the potential threat.” His voice is low, conspiratorial. “And may the odds be ever in your favor.”

“Smug fucker,” Stiles mutters. 

Scott laughs weakly. Almost a gurgle.  “Are we going to go?”

Derek says “yes” the exact moment Stiles says “no”, and Derek’s eyebrows start to get that belligerent, combative look. Like two very angry caterpillars are fighting for space on his forehead. 

“ _You’re_ not,” Stiles stresses, and pushes on Scott’s shoulder until he leans back against the sheet of rock they’d been using for their half-assed cover. “You’re going to hide.”

One of Derek’s eyebrows rockets back up. He’s quick, at least.

“But --”

“And you’re not going either,” Derek interrupts. Which - _rude_.

“The hell I’m not,” Stiles says. “You can’t just go alone.”

“He’s sick,” Derek says, pointing at Scott, “And _you’re_ slow. I’m leaving.” He turns away with his spear in the other hand. “Take Scott back to where we slept last night and hide.”

“I could come after you!” Stiles whisper-yells at Derek’s back, but Derek is already climbing up onto the next ridge and Stiles - honestly - wouldn’t be able to catch up with him. “Jerk.”

That just makes Scott laugh again. “Jerkface.”

“ _Butt_ face,” Stiles counters, even if Derek is… weirdly nice, under his inability to explain himself, or act like he cares about much of anything. If Stiles had the time or energy to devote to sorting out the particulars of Derek’s mental state, he’d guess that Derek spent so long trying not to feel anything it’s hard showing that he does. Or something. 

“He’ll be fine though,” Scott says after a while. He probably means for it to come out confident but it sounds slightly dubious instead. “I mean, it’s Derek. Right?”

Stiles sighs. “Right.” The only one of them who had an actual chance from the get-go. “He’ll probably kill three people just on his way up the mountain. 

”Fingers crossed,” Scott mutters, and if it comes out bitter Stiles doesn’t think anyone could blame him.

“We should go,” Stiles says after another moment. Scott doesn’t look like he’s going to do it on his own. “Derek will expect us to be there.”

Scott murmurs an agreement, and slings his free arm around Stiles’s waist as they head down the mountain.

| |

“I need you to promise me something,” Stiles says. His words feels like they’re coming out too slowly, mired in his mouth, sticking to his tongue. Mucous. Thirsty passed him by a few hours ago and even trying to swallow feels like torture. Scott looks worse - eyes sunken in his face, skin pale and tinged almost blue in the shade. They’re curled around each other, crouched behind a rock that provides them with a little cover if someone happens to look from just the right angle, and there’s something or someone coming up from the bottom of the mountain.

“Yeah?” Scott whispers.

“Stay here until Derek finds you,” Stiles says. “Promise?” Stiles is good with numbers. They’re not in their favor. They never have been and Stiles was never stupid enough to think they were, but the longer time goes on the more variables have slowly disappeared, leaving a much simpler formula behind. They’re on the defensive. They’re slow. Scott is sick. Three of the Careers are left, Lydia, and Aiden. Derek. If Stiles stays here he is, at best, a two second shield between Scott being killed first. He doesn’t prevent Scott from being killed. But if he leaves, he can lead them away. He can be bait, even if he doesn’t have any kind of set trap.

It just makes sense, he thinks. It’s _logical_. Derek has a better shot of pulling Scott through to the end than Stiles does. Those are the odds. Derek is the safe bet, and Stiles is the deadweight. The sacrifice.

Stiles darts forward to kiss Scott. To kiss him _just once_ , even if it tastes of blood and mistakes and fucking _bile_ , even if Scott is probably a little too young for anyone to kiss him like that, still a little too innocent even after everything that’s happened, and Stiles prays to every god he’s never really believed in that Scott stays that way.

“Just in case,” Stiles says, and tries to smile. He must not do a very good job, because Scott’s eyes start to well up, though where that much moisture could even come from Stiles doesn’t know. “And for luck.”

“What are you going to do?” Scott asks, voice cracking.

“Something stupid,” Stiles says.

And he runs.

 

 

iv.

Life gets easier once Stiles’s mother finally dies.

He knows that sounds awful. It _is_ awful. And it’s not like life becomes sunshine and roses, because guess what, his mother is dead, but suddenly - suddenly there’s room to _breathe_. His father gets to sleep at night instead of trading shifts with the other Peacemakers, piecemeal, so that his mother was never alone. Stiles has time to set traps in the woods and tend his garden and there’s suddenly plenty of food to go around without taking another tesserae. His father’s face had gone tight and drawn every time Stiles had done it, but what choice had there been? Starve now, because he might die later? That’s no choice at all.

He brings flowers to her grave every Sunday, as an apology.

| |

“You ready?” Scott asks him, and claps Stiles on the back. “Our last year!”

“So ready,” Stiles mutters. He can’t lie and say he isn’t nervous; there are twenty-two slips in that bowl with his name on them, from the lean years. Not _bad_ odds - Isaac Lahey must have at least forty, stuck with a drunk father and a crazy brother - but not good, not as low as seven. Seven would be preferable. “Is your mom making yay-we’re-not-going-to-die honeycake for later?”

“Did you pick yay-we’re-not-going-to-die berries to go with it?” Scott asks seriously.

“Picked the bush out back _clean_ ,” he says, and they high five before hauling ass to the town square.

| |

This year the girl tribute is Cora Hale. There’s an unexpected rumble from the usually jaded crowd - it seems cruel, somehow _especially_ cruel to have picked a Hale in the same year ten more already died in a fire. Her older brother looks angry, almost senseless with it, like he’s going to do something stupid, and Stiles watches his father take a step toward the small cluster of remaining Hales standing in the back with the rest of the adults.

Cora holds her head high when she steps up to dias. She never did take any shit.

Their District Escort smiles, and pulls a slip of paper from the other bowl. “And this year’s male Tribute is -” Her forehead wrinkles. “Oh dear. Szczepan Stilinski?

 _Decent attempt_ , Stiles thinks, and then, _oh shit,_ and finally, as Scott’s hand tightens around his arm hard enough to bruise, _this is going to kill my dad_.

| |

The next thirty seconds pass in a noiseless, spinning haze. Scott’s wide brown eyes, surprised and sad and horrified. His father’s face, slack with shock. The expressions in the crowd around him - sad for him, or indifferent, or simply happy its not them. The District Escort is beckoning him to the stage, and the Peacemakers - the _Peacemakers_ , the people his Dad fucking _works_ for - coming to drag him to the front.

He’s going to have a panic attack. Right here, right _now_ , with everyone watching, with everyone here to see how weak he is. Scott’s grip on his arm is probably the only thing even holding him upright.

And then, crystal clear - “I volunteer.”

It takes a moment for Stiles to realize he’s not having some kind of weird, oxygen-deprived hallucination.

Scott clears his throat loudly, as though the crowd hadn’t gone deadly silent around him. “I volunteer as Tribute.”

| |

“So I guess you’ll both get extra cake tonight, huh?” is the first thing Scott says once Stiles and Melissa are ushered into the Justice Building. His hair is a mess, like he’d run his hands through it a few times, but his face is all smiles.

He smiles again when the Peacekeepers come to take him to the train. _Smiles_ , like there’s anyone here to impress, like there are any cameras. He smiles like everything is fine, like Stiles and Melissa are the ones who need reassurance. He smiles, because he’s still the strong one.

Stiles never thought Scott would be the one to break his heart, but it’s happening. Right here, right now. A moment he will always be able to look back on with pinprick precision.

“Come back,” he says, when Scott hugs him. “Come back or I’ll kill you myself,” and they laugh together like nothing is wrong at all.

| |

Scott’s token is a strip of red-and-black plaid he knots around his wrist.

“My best friend gave it to me,” he tells Kate Argent. He leans in a little, like it’s a secret he’s sharing with her and not everyone in Panem.

“This wouldn’t be the best friend you volunteered for, would it? Szczepan --”

 _Her_ pronunciation, Stiles notices, is flawless.

“Oh, you should call him Stiles, he hates his real name.”

“ - Stiles, then. It’s from him?”

“My good luck token!” Scott enthuses. “I’ve got to make it home so he can kick my ass for volunteering for him and taking all the glory,” and the crowd roars with delight.

| |

It’s cowardly - he’s a _coward_ , all right, that’s not new - but Stiles can’t watch Scott die. They can drag everyone in the District to the Square, but they can’t make him watch.

Stiles screws his eyes shut when Scott pushes Cora out of the way of a swarm of tracker jackers. He covers his ears when he hears Scott scream. He pretends he’s somewhere else, some _one_ else, a universe where Stiles’s name wasn’t in that bowl twenty-two times, or where Stiles was brave enough to go and die like he was supposed to, or maybe the Capital just no longer needed their yearly pound of flesh. A better world, in some measure or another.

| |

Cora doesn’t make it either.

| |

When they get home his father pulls his bottle of moonshine from under the sink. He pours Stiles drink after drink after drink, until Stiles starts crying, and then he pours him another.

“I’m sorry, Stiles. I’m so, so sorry.” His father’s hand feels like a brand on the back of Stiles’s neck. It will be the same hands that pick him up later when he’s puking hard enough to choke, and probably still crying.

 _But it wasn’t you_ , Stiles hears in the silence that follows. _But it wasn’t you, it wasn’t you, and I wouldn’t change that for the world._

It was supposed to be, though. It was supposed to be Stiles. And he could never drink enough to forget that.

| |

Stiles leaves a basket of food on Melissa’s doorstep every Sunday. She pretends not to be home, though he sometimes sees the curtains rustle, and he pretends that a basket of _fruit_ will ever even come close to repaying the debt Scott left behind.

 

 

 

 v.

“Rise and shine, Princess!”

Jackson’s voice is loud, abrasively cheerful, and _painfully nearby_.

“What is wrong with you?” Stiles groans, and lobs a tasseled, decorative pillow at Jackson’s head. “It’s still - it’s barely _noon_.”

“You think you’d be able to hold your fucking liquor by now,” Jackson snorts. “Lydia wants to get her claws in you for the show tonight. Turning you into a silk purse takes time, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Ugh.” Stiles rolls over and blinks a few times, gingerly. Today Jackson’s hair is dyed a blue-silver and spiked a half foot high. His outfit is… shiny. “As long as she’s not dressing me like that.”

Another snort. “You _wish_ you could look this good, Stilinski,” Jackson says, and turns away on his heel.

The saddest part is that Jackson totally means it.

| |

Stiles’s life is a series of appearances, scheduled and planned and profited from; Jackson lines them up, Lydia makes sure Stiles is dressed to impress, and Stiles knocks them out of the park, boom boom boom. He’s a Citizen of the Capital now, and that comes with standards and expectations he knows well enough to meet.

Kate Argent is a special occasion even for him. Kate Argent is the big guns, bright lights and pictures and a televised interview. Stiles spends the afternoon being buffed and exfoliated and polished and tanned and god knows what else, and just when he thinks he might be done one of Lydia’s minions slathers something sweet smelling and oily into his hair.

“What is this?”

Lydia doesn’t look up from her desk. “Hair pre-treatment, to help deal with everything we’ll put in it later.”

“You realize how insane that sounds, right? Putting this sticky shit in my hair now because of what you’re going to do to it later?”

“Beauty is pain, Stilinski,” Lydia says breezily. “You’ve had worse.”

“Fine,” Stiles says, because he _has_ been through worse, and they both know it. “What ridiculous get-up are you dressing me in tonight?”

Lydia sighs and rolls her eyes heavenward. “It’s derivative. It’s clichéd, it’s trite -”

“But it brings out my pretty brown eyes,” Stiles says, as he looks over her shoulder down at the sketches, and bats his eyelashes.

“It’s your own damn fault. Coming from a place known for its _trees_.”

“There isn’t much else,” Stiles agrees. He always wears at least a bit of green or brown as a nod to his home district; tonight’s ensemble is green and black. Sharp. Kate usually wears silver or black, sometimes red. This will look good.

Stiles busses the Lydia on the cheek. “Just promise me you won’t let Jackson draw on my face again.”

“There’s an idea,” Lydia muses. “A couple of shingles might complete the outfit--” and she shrieks when Stiles ducks his head to swipe his oily-sweet hair against the side of her face 

| | 

There’s an easy rhythm to Stiles’s interviews these days. He’s come a long way from being the nervous kid who couldn’t stop kicking his feet in the pre-Game interview, and Kate is nothing if not predictable at this point. They’re old hats at this; colleagues --  hell, maybe even friends after all these years. Unlike so many of the other Victors, Stiles was attractive, young, witty, and still sane, which could never be underestimated.

Kate always begins with a highlight reel that shows Stiles starting out alone and sad-looking, hiding in the woods, scavenging from corpses. A skinny little fifteen year old from a lesser District. Easy pickings.

“You weren’t the first Tribute to pretend to be weak in order to survive,” Kate Argent reminds the audience. As if any of them forgot, or even have the _chance_ to forget, with Stiles trotted out each year like a prized stallion.  “But I have to say that you did so spectacularly.” It’s not the Argent way, of course - they’re trained from childhood to be absolutely, intimidatingly deadly - but sometimes the Victor is simply the strongest, or the smartest, or even just the luckiest. For a given definition of luck. 

Stiles knows better than to give voice to any of those thoughts. “I was good, wasn’t I?” he asks instead, and preens under the roar of applause. 

The second half of the video is where the action begins. It consists of Stiles beating the remaining Tributes to death with a makeshift bat. It takes only two pounds of pressure to smash someone’s nose back into their brains, and Stiles used so much more than that. It’s gory, and violent, and Stiles learned long ago to watch with a detached form of amusement before giving Kate his best smile at the end. 

“One of our favorites,” Kate says, and somehow widens her smile even more.

“The Capital has been pretty good to me,” Stiles says agreeably.

| |

When President Argent announces the rules of the Third Quarter Quell, the room erupts around Stiles. Most of it is cheering and applause - Lydia’s parties are always filled with the cream of the Capital crop, because she knows what side her bread is buttered on - but Erica can’t hold back a shriek, and even Boyd curses. Stiles doesn’t - he doesn’t feel anything, yet. He didn’t know this was coming, not _exactly_ , but he knew it was going to be something horrifically spectacular after the last year’s Games.

Lydia’s nails dig into Stiles’s wrist. _Hold it together,_ her smile says, chin tilted up, and Stiles feels his lips curve upwards into points.

| |

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says over and over that night when people ask - twenty times, fifty, a hundred. “I’m kind of a one trick pony, don’t you think? We’ll just have to see whose name is drawn!”

| |

It’s daybreak before Lydia’s servants usher the last of the socialites out on the street. Stiles had gotten roaringly drunk, sobered up, and is slowly coming back around to drunk again now that Erica is mixing them drinks.

“Argent obviously wants to get rid of the boy from Twelve. The Mockingjay,” Erica declares, and tosses back something bright green and fizzing with aplomb. “I don’t think he could have made that much clearer.”

“But why use the Quell?” Isaac asks. They all know the Capital has easier ways; an accident, an overdose. Everyone here is familiar with the way people disappear. “Sure, this way the McCall kid dies, but killing twenty-two other Victors to achieve that seems…”

“It’s spectacle,” Erica says. “People like seeing him suck face with the Yukimura girl, but they’ll like him even better when someone’s stabbing him.”

Lydia snorts. It’s decidedly unladylike, which means she is _trashed_. “It’s stupid. Half the reason the system even works is because the Victors live in luxury afterwards. They’re safe. They send money back to their Districts, they support their families. If -- ” Lydia takes a moment to collect her thoughts. “If it was just about _sacrifice_ , they’d kill twenty-four kids a year and be done with it. They let one live because that gives the Districts hope. It keeps them from rebelling against all the bullshit because every so often, every once in a while, they get to win. 

“This takes the wins away,” Stiles says, chewing on his lip. “The big question, though, is whether it’s enough.”

They all fall silent for a moment. Erica taps her fingernails while Lydia swirls her drink. Isaac looks - constipated, really, but Stiles is going to assume his actual emotion is somewhere in the neighborhood of ‘consternation.’

“There’s still the entertainment factor,” Boyd says after a moment. “Most of the Capital isn’t going to see past the fun of watching twenty-four winners slaughter one another. The Districts --” He shrugs one broad shoulder. “If we had the Mockingjay --"

“Deaton says he doesn’t give a shit,” Stiles interrupts. “Not as long as his mother is fine, and his girlfriend.”

“He might have changed his mind after the announcement,” Erica says with something like humor, however dark, and Stiles belatedly remembers McCall is the only male winner from 12, and his girlfriend only one of two.

“We should...” We should get someone on that, he wants to say. Some of the other Districts have only had a few winners, and they lie all along the political spectrum. He forgets: did 8 have three female winners, or just two? Caitlin is on their side, he knows, but the others...

“Jackson’s on it,” Lydia says, because Lydia might be the brains of their little hub, but Jackson is tapped into the Capital, can go places and knows people the rest of them can only dream about. Lydia and Stiles could tally the basic numbers themselves easily, nimbly, but Jackson will come back with information on who’s sick, who’s in love, who’s addicted to morphling; which Victors have stopped training and which are more deadly than the day they entered the Arena, which are still seasoned and dangerous and which have crossed the line into simply too old. He’s a gossipy bitch, but that has its use.

“There’s only a month until the Reaping,” Isaac says suddenly, after they’ve fallen into another lull of contemplative silence. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

“I’ll be training,” Stiles says humorlessly, and yes, there it is, the elephant in the room. Stiles hasn’t let himself lapse too far into luxury - there’s a certain segment of the public far too interested in his girlish figure - but he isn’t exactly in killing shape, and to some extent he never was. He’s not sure what difference a month will make, but. “Just in case.”

“You’re -” Erica raises an eyebrow, and then seems to pick over her words carefully. “Are you going to Volunteer?”

“I don’t think I can,” Stiles says honestly. He thinks Boyd is judging him for it, a little, but considering he’s the only one in the fucking room to ever actually be in the Arena, he can let it slide off his back. Stiles is very comfortable admitting he isn’t sure he has to guts to go back, willingly, into a place he’s almost certainly going to die. “I could lie to you, but the truth is you shouldn’t count on it.”

Stiles drains the rest of of drink, and it has the added bonus of keeping him from meeting anyone’s gaze.

| |

“Don’t count on me being there,” he says to Lydia later, tired from a day spent in the gym, pushing himself until he wants to collapse. “But if that’s where I end up, count on me to do the right thing.”

She nods. They both know Stiles isn’t a hero, but he’s always been good with working in the circumstances he’s given.

| |

Stiles doesn’t go back to District 7 until the night before the Reaping. He hates the Capital, but in the years since the Games its faded to a bloodless hate. Cold. Stiles can even admit he’s gotten used to his gilded cage, to never needing to work, to never worry about whether he’ll go to bed hungry that night. He has Lydia in the Capital, and Boyd and Erica and Isaac and yes, even Jackson. They’re alive, and their existence is more or less guilt-free.

Home is full of painful memories. Sharper. Full of hooks. District 7 is the place where Stiles once had a family, where every time he turns a corner there’s a parent or a sibling or a sweetheart of one of the Tributes who never made it back. District 7 is graveyard.

| |

The stage in front of the Justice Building isn’t crowded. There are only five Victors all told - Heather and Mallory on the one side, and Stiles, Harris, and Graham on the other. Mallory and Heather are relatively young and strong. Harris is creeping on middle-aged and usually drunk, and Graham is older still but lumberjack solid, with a wife and two daughters. No one is likely to Volunteer. Hell, no one’s ever Volunteered the first time around. District 7 might be richer than some, but its still woodsy, remote, prone to harsh winters and periods of starvation. No one here believes in the glory of the games. There are a handful of Victors only because the people here are hardy and sensible; the kind who can survive on their own.

“And the Male Tribute is -- “

Jackson pulling Stiles’s name from the bowl isn’t exactly a surprise. How could it be a surprise, with odds being what they are? Stiles didn’t know how much he was hoping against hope, though, until that moment. Until the crushing, sour feeling blooms in the pit of his stomach.

Jackson’s smile stays wide and practiced. It doesn’t falter even when he stumbles over Stiles’s full name and the crowd titters nervously. And, well - its a reminder that it’s showtime. That there’s not a second of Stiles’s life where he shouldn’t be _on_.

So Stiles puts on his biggest, brightest smile for the crowd. He waves a little, dorkily - harmless, lovable Stiles Stilinski - and the crowd claps and claps under the careful eyes of the Peacekeepers, and the cameras beam everything back to the Capital.

| |

Heather and Stiles spend the ride back to the Capital drinking and reminiscing about the local swimming hole, the midsummer bonfires, an old schoolmistress they’d had who had been fond of the switch. Jackson watches from a nearby couch while disinterestedly flipping through a fashion magazine, and any of the guards who might pass through the compartment don’t spare them a second look.

| |

President Argent is giving his big Opening Ceremony speech while the Tributes ready for their entrance. It feels both more and less important than last time: the crowd already knows who they are, after all, and what they’re capable of. Ceremony. Pagentray. Bread and circuses. Stiles and Heather are dressed as trees, as tradition demands, although Lydia has done more than anyone could have asked for. They’re both draped in brown but the front of Heather’s dress slashes low, edged in silver, and Stiles’s outfit is a one-strapped tunic with a rush of silver down the front, like axes cutting through timber. That silver is the Argent’s preferred color doesn’t hurt, he supposes.

The round of applause they receive for riding before the crowds is gratifying - louder than 5 or 6, at the very least. Unlike some of the other Victors, who retire to their mansions until they’re called to Mentor in the Capital, Stiles has always carefully cultivated his popularity. Perceptions can be as powerful as truths, he’s found, and squandering any sort of goodwill - even the Capital’s goodwill - seemed a waste.

Argent nods when they pass, and Heather and Stiles both bow slightly, stiffly, hands clenched together underneath the rim of the chariot.

| |

Stiles probably shouldn’t go over to the McCall kid after and start pushing his buttons, but Stiles has never really been all that great with _should_.

“Nice outfit,” he says. McCall is swathed from head to toe in charcoal black. It’s not doing him any favors; he looks like a little kid at a funeral. The Yukimura girl at least looks sharp in it. Edged. “Not exactly your color.”

Amazingly, the kid smiles. Like he didn’t even notice the barb. “Not really,” he admits. “Kira said I looked like an undertaker.”

“Appropriate,” Stiles says. “Considering.”

McCall jerks his head around at that, as if to see if anyone is listening. It’s not subtle, and the answer is obvious - _everyone_ is listening. Stiles assumes that everyone is always listening, and watching, and lives his life from there.

Stiles smirks. “Calm down, McCall. Can’t kill you _before_ the main event, now can they?” he tosses over his shoulder, and saunters away.

| |

Everything about the Third Quarter Quell is bigger, brighter, more intense. Gearing up for the Games always means parties, though the Tributes are usually too young to properly appreciate them. This year is no different. Stiles spends his nights partying and his days training, always gossiping, always flirting, testing boundaries wherever he finds them. Even the format of the interview night changes. Kate interviews some of the Districts together - the brother and sister from 1, the married couple from 4 - and they show the highlight reels from past games with relish; the bloodiest kills, the cleverest traps.

Heather interviews before Stiles. Lydia dressed her in a fitted dark green gown, distractingly short. It makes Heather’s legs look miles long, the muscles in them pulling when Heather crosses her legs, shoe heels thin and pointed as knives, silvered at the very tips. Her hair is pulled up in an intricate knot that Stiles is willing to bet he’ll be picking hairpins out of for hours and hours later. She looks dangerous. She looks like a girl who carved her own throwing spears with a sharpened rock and killed people perched in a goddamn tree. She doesn’t look like the kind of girl who’s going to die, but it might happen anyway.

“Punch me,” Stiles mutters to Lydia. She doesn’t ask why, just carefully closes her fist around perfectly done nails and punches him in the arm.

Then she sighs. “Do I - ”

“No,” he says, and turns back to watch Heather’s interview.

“How are you feeling about your second go round?” Kate asks Heather once they’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way. Her smile is as bright and threatening as a blade.

“I think it’s nice to already know your enemies,” Heather says, smiling back. “To know we’re all killers.”

“Mostly killers,” Kate corrects, and Heather concedes the point with a nod of her head. There are a few among the Tributes who hid, who who outran, who outlasted. Sometimes the Arena and the dangers within kill far more than the Tributes themselves.

“Maybe the non-killers are the ones we should be worried about,” Heather says, half-joking.  “After all, they’re the rarer breed.”

“True,” Kate says, and her smile tightens until it looks screwed on. She’s upset, Stiles realizes, surprised, even though he doesn’t know why. Next to him Lydia stills. Even the audience, as riled up as they are, as high on bloodthirst, sense something is amiss and begin to mutter.

The rest of Heather’s interview wraps up quickly - shortened, Stiles would bet - and he’s ushered on hastily.

“Stiles!” Kate exclaims, and for a moment the roar of the crowd is deafening. Stiles kisses the air above Kate’s cheekbone and accidentally breathes her in; face powder, something flowery, and something metallic.

“Kate,” he says, as evenly as he can, and smiles as she gestures for him to sit down. “Wasn’t I _just_ here?” He lets the laughter from the audience roll over him and calm his nerves. This is his battleground. This is _his_ play.

Kate swats him playfully with her stack of cue cards. “You know you’re one of my favorites, Stiles,” and Stiles takes a moment to thank a deity or two he’d never really been Kate’s favorite flavor of pretty. “It’s always good to have you here.”

Kate settles back into her chair. “So what do you think of this year’s Games?” she asks, perfectly content to let Stiles do the heavy lifting. “The Third Quarter Quell seems like it’s going to be _fantastic_.”

“I think it’s bullshit,” Stiles says blandly, and once his words settle you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. “I think we’re all getting screwed over here. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but winning the Hunger Games meant getting to live the rest of my life in peace and luxury, right? Yeah? But here I am again, on this goddamn stage for all your entertainment, and you know what? Fuck that.

“ _Fuck that,_ ” Stiles says again, right to Kate Argent’s face, and to the millions of people watching. Right in the middle of his interview. He gets an intense amount of pleasure in imagining Gerard Argent’s face go red and apoplectic as he watches from his fancy mansion three miles down the road. “And fuck anyone who had anything to do with that!”

The crowd roars back - angry, shocked, confused, disbelieving, _outraged_ , though Stiles doubts the citizens of the Capital could ever summon it up for the right reasons.

“You sound ungrateful,” Kate says, and holy shit, she is _pissed_. “Ungrateful for what the Capital has given you.”

“You want to trade places?” Stiles asks, sweetly, and walks off the stage in the quiet wings.

| |

In the waiting room, Heather and Lydia are talking with Boyd and the woman from 3, Stiles thinks, or was it 4? She’s one of the older Tributes, not reckless but tired, very tired, and Boyd thinks she’ll end up helping them.

Stiles nearly trips over Deaton’s little protege on his way to join them. McCall stares up at him, wide-eyed, mouth falling slightly open. That he made it through the Arena once before already seems like a miracle. Stiles raises an eyebrow over the little brat’s head as if to say _him, really?_ and Lydia shrugs. Well. Stiles defers to her judgment.

“How can you just --” McCall stutters. Their little mockingjay. Their little lamb, more like. Stiles knows it works well that he’s so innocent, or at least seems to be, but it - it fucking _stings_. It rubs Stiles the wrong way every time, that this kid is still like that. “What were you thinking!”

“They can’t hurt me,” Stiles says slowly. “There’s no one left that I love.” They killed his father a long time ago to bring him in line, to break him the way they’d broken Harris. Stiles supposes its lucky he’s not the type to be cowed into submission. The Argents stoked his anger - they didn’t bury it. “I can say whatever I want.”

McCall looks sad at that, for a moment, a touch envious, and Stiles thinks of the kid’s mother back in Twelve. How much prettier and happier she’d looked a year on, without starvation hollowing out her cheeks.

“You should get ready,” Stiles says, not unkindly. “Go make nice to the Argent bitch,” and he lets Lydia tuck him into bed that night, too drunk to stand.

| |

“Why?” Scott will ask him later in the Arena, bewildered. Stiles is still wiping the blood off his face and out of his eyes, hoping Heather will still come out of the woods behind him, hating that he can still hope. “Why _me?”_

“Because it has to be you!” Stiles yells, and tastes copper. “Because no one likes _me_ , do you understand? Not the way they love you.” People want to fuck Stiles, sure, laugh at him like the performing monkey he is, pretend to know him, buy him a drink in a bar, but _like_ him? “The whole world loves you, McCall.” He’s their brother, their son, their best friend, their sweetheart. He’s every child who was ever sent off to die in the Arena with no recourse. He’s got puppy dog eyes and a fetching new haircut courtesy of the Capital, but no one will ever forget those baby soft curls. 

“ _I’m_ the loudmouth,” Stiles continues. “ _I’m_ the truth no one wants to hear. You’re the one who softens the blow, who softens their _hearts_. It’s you because its all _for you_ , because you’re the best shot any of us have.”

Yukimura, Morrell, and Parrish all stand at the water’s edge, separate from them, an illusion of privacy as they scream. Parrish and Yukimura watch the sky, embarrassed, but Morrell looks contemplative.

“So you don’t die,” Stiles says. “You hear me? You don’t die,” and he doesn’t realize he’s grabbed hold of Scott’s face until he jerks his chin up and down, nodding unsteadily.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” and Scott keeps nodding.

“Good,” and Stiles nods his own head, shaky. “Good.”

 

 

vi.

It’s colder than Stiles remembers. It has to be almost nighttime, judging by the slant of the light coming in through the windows and the fiery amber color it makes on the floor boards.

 Scott is sitting across the table from him, peeling potatoes.

“How long was I gone this time?” Stiles asks. It doesn’t feellike a long time, but it was morning the last Stiles remembered.

 “A day and a half.” Scott puts the finished potato in the pot beside him and starts on another. “Nothing happened.” 

“Good.”

“And your dad is coming over for dinner.” 

“Even better,” Stiles mutters. “You need any help?”

“Set the table, I guess?” Scott asks, and moves the pot and the potatoes over to the sink while Stiles picks out four plates, four cups, four napkins. Scott will get the silverware after.

| |

Morrell says Stiles’s blackouts are a coping mechanism. They’re how Stiles got through the Games to begin with, by checking out and not remembering what he’d done. He’d been grateful for it at the time, as grateful as someone could be to wake up standing over the body of someone who was trying to kill them. It got Stiles home, so - so some days Stiles does feel pretty grateful.

| |

Stiles is mashing the potatoes when John comes in. He kicks his boots off at the door and hangs up his coat, and Stiles tries to pretend his dad isn’t having an entire silent conversation with Scott over his head. It’s the kind of thing you get pretty good at ignoring.

Stiles makes a small raspberry noise when John greets him with a smacking kiss to the top of his head, and a squeeze to his shoulder.

“Good to have you back, kid,” John says, and at least Stiles never doubts that he means that.

| |

Stiles doesn’t even count the blackouts as the bad days, honestly.They’re not _great_ ones, but they’re not bad. The bad days are the ones where he gets violent, where he hurts someone and doesn’t mean to. Stiles was never under the impression he was a good person, but he never thought he was a bad one either. He wasn’t a murderer before.

He has the hardest time in the summer when it gets hot. The heat, god, the heat reminds him of the jungle, and he can’t always tell the difference between sweat and blood -- he can’t help worrying what could be hiding behind foliage, that the sun will bake him to a crisp. It sets his teeth on edge. He becomes almost nocturnal, in the summers. It doesn’t help his reputation any, but he eats breakfast with Scott before tumbling into bed, and he makes dinner when the sun goes down. He crawls into bed with Scott and stays there until Scott starts snoring, until the world is quiet and still and cool and Stiles is ready for it again.

| |

“I saw Malia coming in from the fields again,” John says over dinner. “You should tell her to be more careful.” John won’t report her, but there are others who would. Not just the Peacekeepers, but anyone who was hoping for an extra bit of food, for a blind eye to whatever they were trying to smuggle in themselves.

“You think she listens to me?” Stiles asks, shooting for sullen, but secretly pleased. Malia does listen to him sometimes, if she’s in the mood.

Under the table, Scott’s knee knocks up against Stiles’s.

| |

Two months after Stiles first came back, Scott had found a stash of raw cassava roots in Stiles’s room.

“Promise me you won’t,” Scott had asked. Demanded. He’d dug his fingers into Stiles’s shoulders hard enough to bruise, but Stiles had had so much worse recently. He was almost grateful he could feel it. “Goddamn it, Stiles. Your _dad_ \--”

“I nearly killed him,” Stiles had whispered instead, and Scott’s face had gone pale and hot with a shame that wasn’t even his. “I nearly killed that kid, Scott, and I didn’t even - I didn’t even know till it was almost over. I’m not - I’m not _right_ anymore.” Everyone in the village knew it. They all stared.

“We’ll fix it,” Scott had promised. “We’ll fix it, whatever it takes, I promise.” He had slid one hand up to scrub at Stiles’s hair, two months grown, greasy and unwashed, and Stiles had rested his head against Scott shoulder while he tried to cry.

Stiles hadn’t thought about it again, not seriously, not until Scott’s name was pulled two years later.

| |

“Victors,” John snorts one night, drunk. It worries Stiles sometimes, but it mostly happens near the time of year his mother died. It had been a hard winter that year, and the ground had been so frozen they couldn’t bury her until spring.

“There aren’t any Victors,” John continues. “ _Survivors_ ,” while Melissa shushes him.

Stiles turns over and buries his nose in Scott’s chest. He concentrates on breathing evenly, in and out and in.

| |

Stiles tries to strangle the District 11 Escort when he tells Stiles he has to go to the Capital and Mentor Scott. On the bright side, it’s the last time the Capital does anything but leave him alone.

Melissa tells him Stiles she brought him to the Justice Building every day to watch, but Stiles doesn’t remember that either.

| |

On the really bad days, Stiles hates Scott for not coming back as fucked up as Stiles did. Which is awful, right? Wishing Scott were fucked up too? That’s about as awful as it gets. Stiles should just be glad they came back at all, two boys from 11 with almost no chance. He should be so grateful that they’re still together, that they live in the Victor’s Village, that they always have enough to eat, and so do Melissa, and John. That they don’t have to want for anything anymore, nothing except what they lost in the Arena, and - well, everyone pays, don’t they? One way or another.

Stiles doesn’t hate Scott. He doesn’t. He loves him too much to hate him, he just - Stiles wishes maybe he’d come back a little less broken, that’s all.

| |

Melissa stops by after dinner to check in. She looks tired but happy; there are always a lot of babies born this time of year, and it runs her ragged.

“There isn’t much else to do in the winter, is there?” Stiles asks, widening his eyes, and his father covers his face with his hands and mutters something that might be _that’s my boy_.

| |

Scott came back less fucked up, but he didn’t come back all right. On Scott’s bad days, he gets angry. _Really_ angry, out of control angry. He never did before - Scott probably could have written the book on cheerful and even-keeled, before - but everyone is different after the Games. Sometimes he gets so angry it bursts out of him, it scares people, but he gets a better handle on it day by day. He goes out to chop wood sometimes, to do nothing but swing an axe over and over again, until his shoulders and his back ache and he can’t breathe, can’t think, just falls to the ground and returns to some kind of equilibrium.

Three years running he and Stiles have never run out of fuel in the winter, not even close.

| |

Stiles wakes up in bed, and there’s frost on the window. 

“How long?” he asks, and next to him Scott stills.

“A while,” Scott says a moment, and the creak of his voice tells Stiles it was a very long time indeed.

Stiles survived, but he didn’t come back right, and everyone knows it. 

 

 

 

(and one that did)

 

The problem with being a pessimist - or a realist, in Stiles’s opinion, because can you ever be _too_ pessimistic about a fight to the death? he does think so - is that Stiles never thought they'd make it this far 

The problem with never thinking about it is not having a plan.

Stiles doesn't have a fucking _plan._

"We're the last two," Scott says, shocked. It’s a somewhat inane thing to say, but since they're currently standing at the edge off a cliff they’d just pushed a man off, Stiles is going to let it go. It’s been a pretty disturbing few days all around.

“The last two,” Stiles repeats. It comes out horrified but a little reverent, in a way. There’s a trail of bodies behind them, a trail of bodies that brought them here.

“I --” Scott starts to say, and he lifts his chin. God, its awful that Stiles _knows_ that look. “I’ll --”

Stiles grabs both of Scott’s hands in his. “No! No, you can’t, I - ” Don’t do anything stupid, he wants to tell him. Don’t make any hasty decisions; the Capital can wait another goddamn five minutes before they release the dogs or mutant bats or an earthquake or whatever they feel is appropriate in this situation. Fuckers.

Stiles lifts Scott’s hands to his mouth and kisses them desperately. He tastes dirt and blood and the bitter nettles they’d been eating for the past week, and almost cries when Scott’s open palms cup his face.  It’s so - it’s awful, oh god, why did Stiles think this was the optimal choice?

“I love you,” Stiles says, because they haven’t yet, they haven’t said it - Stiles hasn’t, and whatever happens in the next few minutes, he wants to say it at least once.

“I love you too,” Scott says, and Scott is kissing him, open-mouthed and hot. Nothing like the one-sided kiss Stiles had pressed to Scott’s sweaty forehead when they were stuck in that cave, a benediction, a prayer, a plea for help to come from somewhere; nothing like the angry one Scott had given Stiles after he’d dropped the hive of tracker jackers on the assholes from District 1 while they’d scrabbled away, the one that had ended in a clack of teeth, the one that had felt almost like punishment. It’s a real kiss, the kind you hear about in stories, the kind that Stiles wants to melt into while forgetting every other damn thing in the world, and he can’t, he _can’t._  

“I don’t know what to do,” Scott says, voice wavering. His hands are still pressed to either side of Stiles’s face, holding them close. And Scott is exactly the kind of selfless asshole who would take a running leap off the cliff if Stiles asked, swayed by stories of Stiles’s sick mother and his good, hard-working father. Scott is the kind of boy who doesn’t care about winning, who just wants to go home to his mother, a nice boy, the best kind of boy there is. Its why Stiles is in love with him, though he’s not entirely sure why Scott loves him back.

“I don’t know what to do either,” Stiles confesses. He didn’t have a plan for this. He’s off his game. “I guess I wasn’t totally prepared for all the eventualities,” he says, and Scott laughs a little, choked. And still, neither of them move. 

“Can you --” Stiles starts. “Wouldyou --” He’s got an insane urge to gamble, a stupid urge. It would be stupid, wouldn’t it, when they’re so close to winning, when someonecould win. But can’t shake the feeling that he can get him out of this. Stiles _knows_ how people think. He knows how the Capital thinks. He knows what they want, and he knows how the Games work. He knows what they mean, and Game without a Victor is no Game at all.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Stiles says. “And you’re not going to kill me. Because - because I can’t live with that, Scott, and I know you can’t either.” None of that is even untrue, if Stiles is being honest. It’s an impossible choice - not just kill or be killed, but kill the person you love, or let that person kill you. At this point, even if one of them walks away, it’s not _winning_.  “I want to - I -” They’re holding onto each other’s hands so tightly Stiles can feel their bones grind together. So tight it hurts enough to be real.

“Together?” Scott asks, gently. So fucking gently, like Stiles is going to break. He might not be too far off.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, and exhales. “Yeah.” They turn together, in sync, Stiles’s left hand in Scott’s right.

“That is a long way down,” Scott says first.

Stiles giggles almost hysterically. “It’ll do the job,” he says. The third to last Victor is down there somewhere, and proof of that.

Scott hesitates for a moment - thinking about his mother, probably. Thinking about Stiles’s family back home, thinking that _one_ of them should make it out alive. But Stiles’s eyes are screaming _trust me, trust me_ , _trust me, don’t leave me here alone_.

Scott tries to smile, one corner of his mouth lifting. “You’ve got me.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says softly. “And you’ve still got me.”

“Count of three?” Scott asks, and Stiles nods.

“One.” 

“Two.”

“Thr--” 

“Stop!” Deucalion’s voice rings out from the speaker, sharply accented, crisp and _angry_ , and Stiles jerks Scott back from the edge so hard they tumble on their backs into the dirt. “The _two_ Victors of the Seventy-Fourth Games--”

 

**Author's Note:**

> 1 - Scott, asthma  
> 2 - Scott, unknown  
> 3 - Stiles, unknown/implied. Derek being suicidal is also talked about.  
> 4 - Stiles’s mother, illness. Scott, tracker jackers.  
> 5 - Stiles, poison  
> 6 - Stiles thinks about committing suicide but ultimately does not. plenty of psychological fuckedupness.
> 
>  
> 
> and 7 - EVERYBODY LIVES
> 
> okay everyone important w h a t e v e r


End file.
